CHAPTER FOUR
1454 Words
POV: Ria Vasquez (FMC)
Blackwood Tower rises from the city like a black blade.
Forty-seven stories. Glass and steel. A monument to money I'll never understand.
The driver doesn't speak as he leads me inside. The lobby is marble. Cold. Silent. A single security guard nods at us.
The elevator requires a fingerprint.
“Mr. Blackwood's private residence,” the driver says. “Forty-seventh floor. You won't need a key.”
He presses his thumb to the scanner. The doors close.
I watch the numbers climb.
Penthouse. His domain. My prison.
The doors open into a hallway longer than my entire apartment.
White walls. Black floors. Art I don't recognize.
The driver gestures to a door at the end. “Your room.”
Your room. Not his room. Not our room.
A small mercy.
I push the door open.
And stop.
The room is enormous. A bed big enough for four people. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. A closet the size of my old bedroom. A bathroom with a tub I could swim in.
It's beautiful.
It's a cage.
I turn to ask the driver a question.
He's gone.
The door clicks behind me.
Locked.
From the outside.
I try the handle. Won't budge.
I press my ear to the wood. Silence.
Then footsteps. Fading.
I'm alone.
I slide down the door until I'm sitting on the floor. My knees press against my chest.
The contract is signed. My father is alive. The bills are paid.
So why do I feel like I'm drowning?
I close my eyes.
One year. You can survive one year.
The hours pass.
No windows open. No phone. No television.
Just the city lights blinking below and my own heartbeat in my ears.
I explore the room. Every drawer is empty. The closet has silk robes and designer dresses in my size.
He prepared this.
Weeks ago. Months maybe.
While I was serving drinks to men who didn't see me, he was building a cage around my life.
I found a sketchbook on the nightstand. Blank pages. Charcoal pencils arranged by shade.
He knows I draw.
Of course he knows.
I want to throw it against the wall. Instead, I open it.
And I draw the lighthouse.
Night falls.
The city glitters. Distant. Untouchable.
I lie in the massive bed and stare at the ceiling. The sheets smell like cedar. Like him.
My body is exhausted. My mind won't shut off.
What is he doing right now? Sitting in some leather chair? Counting his money? Forgetting I exist?
Then I hear it.
A sound through the wall.
Quiet at first. Muffled.
I sit up.
Another sound. Louder.
Crying.
Deep. Broken. The kind of crying you do when you're alone and you've given up on pretending.
It's coming from his room.
I shouldn't care.
He's my captor. My warden. The man who bought me like a piece of furniture.
But my feet are already on the floor.
I walk to the door. Try the handle again.
Still locked.
I press my palm against the wood. The crying continues. Raw. Unashamed.
Who cries like that?
Someone who's been holding it together for too long. Someone who's forgotten what it feels like to be held.
I know that cry. I've swallowed it a hundred times in this apartment.
Papi. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
“Killian?” I whisper through the door.
The crying stops.
Silence.
Then footsteps. His side of the door.
“Go back to bed.” His voice is wrecked. Hoarse.
“Are you okay?”
A bitter laugh. “No.”
“Then let me in.”
“No.”
“Why?”
A pause so long I think he's walked away.
Then: “Because you'll see me. The real me. And you'll run.”
I should run.
I should be grateful for the locked door. For the barrier between his brokenness and my freedom.
But I've been running my whole life.
From bills. From loneliness. From the truth that my mother abandoned us because I wasn't worth staying for.
I press my forehead against the wood.
“I'm not going to run,” I say quietly.
“You don't know that.”
“Neither do you.”
Another pause.
Then the lock clicks.
The door opens.
He's standing in the darkness of his bedroom. Backlit by the city lights.
No shirt. Bare feet. His chest is crisscrossed with scars. Thin white lines. Some are old. Some newer ones.
But it's his face that stops my heart.
Red eyes. Wet cheeks. A man who has been crying so hard he forgot to wipe the evidence.
He looks younger like this. Not the cold CEO. Not the finger-breaking monster.
Just a boy who's been hurting for a very long time.
“Satisfied?” he asks. His voice cracks on the last syllable.
“No,” I say. “I'm not satisfied. I'm confused.”
“Join the club.”
He walks to his bed and sits on the edge. Don't invite me in. Don't tell me to leave.
I step inside anyway.
The room is sparse. A bed. A nightstand. A window facing the ocean.
No photos. No personal items. Like he's been erased before he died.
I sit on the floor across from him. Not on the bed. Not too close.
“Why were you crying?”
“Does it matter?”
“I wouldn't ask if it didn't.”
He stares at the window. At the waves crashing in the darkness.
“Today is the anniversary of my father's death,” he says. “He killed himself. In this building. Forty-seventh floor. He jumped.”
My chest tightens.
“I was fourteen,” he continues. “I was in the next room. I heard the window break. I ran. But I was too slow.”
“Killian…”
“Don't.” His voice sharpens. “Don't pity me. I don't deserve it.”
“Who said anything about pity?”
He looks at me. Those gray eyes are raw. Unprotected.
“I've been looking for you for ten years,” he says. “Not because I wanted to own you. Because you're the only person who ever made me feel like I wasn't already dead.”
The lighthouse.
The drawing I made of a drowning boy when I was fourteen. I didn't know who he was. I just saw him in a dream. A boy with gray eyes sinking beneath the waves.
I drew him on a ruined wall. And someone must have seen it. Someone must have shown him.
“That was you,” I whisper. “The boy in the water.”
“Yes.”
“I didn't know you were real.”
“I didn't know you were real either. Until I found the drawing. And I've been searching ever since.”
He stands. Walk to the window. His back is to me.
“I paid your father's bills. I bought the casino where you worked. I moved you into this building. Not to trap you. To keep you safe.”
“From what?”
“From myself. From the part of me that wanted to destroy everything good because I couldn't have it.”
I stand too.
I don't touch him. Don't cross the room.
But I don't leave either.
“You're still crying,” I say.
He wipes his cheek. Look at the wetness on his fingers like he's never seen it before.
“I don't cry,” he says. “I haven't cried since I was fourteen.”
“You're crying now.”
“Because you're here.”
The words land between us. Heavy. True.
“I don't understand you,” I say.
“Good. Neither do I.”
He turns. Look at me. Not at my body. At my face. My eyes.
“Go back to your room, Ria. Before I do something we'll both regret.”
“Like what?”
His jaw tightens. His hands curl into fists.
“Like asking you to stay.”
I should go.
I should walk through that door and lock it behind me and pretend I never saw him broken.
But I've been alone in a locked room my whole life.
And for the first time, someone is alone with me.
I sit back down on the floor.
“I'm not staying for you,” I say. “I'm staying be
cause I'm tired of running.”
He stares at me for a long moment.
Then he sits on the floor across from me.
Not touching. Not speaking.
Just breathing.
The city lights flicker. The waves crash below.
And two broken people sit in silence.
Not lovers. Not enemies.
Something new.
Something terrifying.
- Writer
